Kim Goodwin

Talk

“Cultural" Competence for Designers

Tue 25 October 16

Perhaps the biggest frustration for most design teams is doing good work only to see it go nowhere. Often it’s the organisation’s culture at fault; a place that simply doesn’t value its customers is clearly in need of change. Sometimes, though, it’s the designers who need to adapt, because the way they’re going about the work doesn’t suit the organisation’s decision style. Just as a product for one persona may not suit another, a design process and team culture that work in one environment may fail in another.

Kim will share a framework for assessing what your organisation really values (vs. what they claim to value), understanding how that affects decision-making, and adapting your team’s approach to your organisation’s culture. Real examples will help you see that organisational behavior, though complex, is mostly a matter of designing for context.

Workshop

Leadership essentials: values, styles, and hard conversations

Wed 26 October 16

When you’re in a leadership role—or trying to adopt one—you don’t get to pick and choose when you bring your best self to the office, because you’re “on stage” every single day. You never know when you’ll have the opportunity to nudge someone’s point of view or help grasp a new skill. Likewise, you never know when your own limitations will be tested or whether you’re letting your own biases get in the way of building your team. That’s why effective leaders take the “back stage” time needed to reflect on their own values and skills, their work styles, the team’s needs, and how they might best approach those “leadership moments” with colleagues.

In this half-day workshop, new leaders will learn critical skills for building and guiding teams. More experienced participants will leave with tools for coaching new leaders and helping them work through differing leadership styles and values. We’ll cover:

• Basing your leadership on values …and how to surface and deal with hidden or differing values that can distort relationships
• Growing teams of leaders by making room for different strengths, roles, and styles
• Using objective criteria, stories, and observation for more effective skills assessment
• Tools for the hard conversations: feedback, negotiation, and culture change
• Adapting your leadership approach to your context and your team’s needs
• Sustaining yourself as a leader

Come prepared to share some of your best (and worst) leadership moments, and to try some specific skills via role plays and other exercises. You’ll leave with both a personal leadership development plan and some tools to try with colleagues.